Cue The Outrage

It looks like there might be a multilateral deal with Iran brewing in which the latter will stop enriching uranium in return for an easing of some of the international sanctions. John Kerry seems to have been one of the principal engineers of the agreement.

An agreement, which U.S. officials described as a "first step" in a comprehensive pact restricting Tehran's ability to seek atomic weapons, could herald a significant shift in U.S.-Iranian relations after years of enmity.

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Well, yes, it would. Or even, yes, it might. And that is going to be the problem. There are an awful lot of American politicians who have left their geopolitical bona fides back in the Carter Administration, and who still are hungering for some big boom-boom, and they're not going to be happy with any deal that doesn't leave open the possibility of turning Qom into a glass parking lot. And this is not even to mention Benjamin Netanyahu, who probably can be counted upon to make as much noise as possible, and already has begun.

"There's no earthly reason to do this," he said. "Not only the force of the existing sanctions but the threat of the future sanctions was the great impetus on the mind of Khamenei, and now they could just take that away." He was referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, who holds ultimate political and religious authority in the country. Speaking to reporters Friday morning before his meeting with Kerry, Netanyahu said he understood "the Iranians are walking around very satisfied in Geneva, as well they should be, because they got everything and paid nothing. Everything they wanted. They wanted relief of sanctions after years of a grueling sanctions regime. They got that. They are paying nothing because they are not reducing in any way their nuclear enrichment capability . . . Israel," he said, "is not obliged by this agreement, and Israel will do everything it needs to defend itself and the security of its people."

"We've crafted an amendment to freeze the administration in and make it so they are unable to reduce the sanctions unless certain things occur," Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) told The Daily Beast in an interview Wednesday. "They have the ability now to waive sanctions. But we're very concerned that in their desire to make any deal that they may in fact do something that is very bad for our country."

And Corker's one of those famous Republican "moderates" with whom the White House perpetually maintains it can deal. Wait until Steve King, and/or Big Scaredy Cat Huckleberry J. Butchmeup, and the flying monkeysoutside of the Congress, get a hold of this. (Rick Santorum, who believes that the Iranians will start a nuclear war in which they would all be incinerated because they want the 12th Imam to come back, may go out and try to hijack a B1.) The debate on this deal could be a formidable combination of the deliberately mendacious and the truly dumb. I wish Secretary Kerry luck because he's going to need it.

"If the reports are correct, this is a terrible deal, and it is dangerous for America. The prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapon capacity is the gravest national security threat we face, yet it appears that this 'deal' does not require Iran to dismantle even a single centrifuge or turn over even a single pound of enriched uranium. To lift economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for an amorphous promise to pause their immediate efforts to acquire nuclear weapons makes no sense whatsoever. It is almost surely unverifiable, and lifting the sanctions will only encourage Iran to surreptitiously continue to develop nuclear weapons--weapons that, if acquired, pose an existential threat to America and our allies.

Surely it's time for another earnest explanation from the brogressive left about how the antiwar movement and the tea party people will join together and stop the imperial American war machine.